A Glasgow man is to ride 3,500km from next month to raise money for cancer charity Cure Leukemia, after his young daughter was struck down with the illness two years ago.
Allan Dickson, 54, from Newton Mearns, sets off on The Tour 21 on June 24, riding around 100 miles a day across the route of the Tour de France until July 17.
Daughter Liv, who turned 14 on Wednesday, was diagnosed with cute lymphoblastic leukemia in November 2020 when she was just 12.
READ MORE: Mum's anger as 5-year-old's deadly brain tumour undiagnosed for 2 years
Allan spoke to Glasgow Live about the stresses of Liv's treatment and his arduous training for the cycling event, as well as how proud he is of Liv for coping with the disease.
Allan, who is a recruitment consultant and married to Abigail, 46, said: "She was 12, and had to quit her gymnastics for a while because she dislocated her knee four or five times. What they found was that the back of her knee hadn't developed properly.
"Because it was during lockdown, I tried to get her an appointment with the doctor, an online appointment.
"Ironically, that day she had been diagnosed, I had an appointment with the doctor. So she had gone to school that day, and she had a temperature, and the school thought she had covid.
"My wife picked her up and took her for the covid test, in the meantime I had a conversation with the doctor and discussed her symptoms.
"I said that 'maybe I sound like a paranoid parent, but I'm just concerned there's maybe more to this than growing pains'."
The doctor told Allan she would like Liv to be taken in for tests, after speaking with a colleague.
Meanwhile, the doctor testing Liv for covid also decided that she needed a further assessment after there were marks found on her legs, which is another sign of leukemia.
After tests at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, Liv was sent home and the family told they would be contacted with any updates. Around 11.15pm, the hospital called to say they needed Liv to come in immediately.
"We took her in, they did some more tests, and she was diagnosed that night with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL).
"You beat yourself up as a parent, you think you should have seen the signs. There are classic symptoms but Liv never really had any of the really classic symptoms. But 98 per cent of her blood was leukemic, so she was very sick."
Medics told the family not to feel guilty, as the fever was the start of the acute illness, when the child becomes very unwell, very quickly.
Liv had to be isolated in a room on her own for 24 hours due to covid before she could be taken up to the ward.
"The staff have been amazing, the doctors and nurses and consultants have been astounding," said Allan.
"At the time it was obviously very, very new, and very surreal, all these emotions going through your head.
"Now it's just part of our lives, it's every day. She has good days, she has bad days.
"Treatment for kids with leukemia is long, it's drawn out, a two-and-a-half-year process for girls and three years for boys. That's assuming that everything goes to plan - and it never does.
"Liv has oral chemo every week and she goes in and has intrathecal chemo every month. She also attends clinic. The biggest thing with this, and you don't know it until you experience it, is the brutality of the chemo on the kids.
"The kids handle it better than adults, so they give them higher doses, but it causes ongoing, extensive treatment being required. So these kids are faced with this fear and anxiety from that, as well as creating life-altering changes for a child.
"A lot of them are developing emotionally, physically, and intellectually. For example, Liv has osteonecrosis, which is bone death caused by the steroids.
"So Liv has gone from being a 12-year-old kid who was involved with Glasgow gymnastics, training four days a week, to now hobbling around with a special insole in her shoe to try and halt the progress of it. The condition is irreversible.
"So it's a lifelong side-effect of the cancer treatment. It's brutal, and as a parent to have to sit and watch this happen to your 12-year-old kid, is horrendous.
"It's permanent, it's irreversible. That's sad. But it is what it is. She's here.
"We'll continue to try and raise awareness and funds for other kids who are going to be diagnosed and are having to deal with the things Liv's having to deal with."
Allan said he felt compelled to take on the charity challenge after becoming disillusioned with funding for children's cancer.
He said: "Children's cancer is massively underfunded as it's deemed to be rare. Only two per cent of funding goes towards children's cancer. There are 13 kids a day diagnosed in the UK with cancer, five of them with leukemia.
"So, 4,500 kids but that's deemed as 'rare' by the government. So it takes organisations like Cure Leukemia to try and support them. Things like trials with medication to help try and support and treat our kids.
"So, raising money and awareness for leukemia in particular was something I wanted to do.
"The last drugs that were developed for Liv's treatment were 44 years ago.
"Of those 4,500 kids who are diagnosed, 450 lose their lives. We are relatively lucky in that Liv has a relatively high success rate in terms of cure, for her specific condition."
Liv's weekly routine now is to go to a clinic to have her bloods checked, and gets chemo based on those results. Her treatment involves the treatment being given via a lumbar puncture in her spine.
"Leukemia hides in spinal colums and brains, so this chemo goes into the spinal column right into the brain to try and catch any leukemia that's hiding there," said Allan.
"It's brutal in that sense. There are various stages to her treatment, mainly induction, consolidation, and maintenance, and she's now in maintenance, which is the final part, but the longest part.
"Obviously we are trying to eradicate it completely. But again you have a situation where 25% of children relapse, and are diagnosed with the same thing again or another form.
"As a parent, there's nothing we can do medically, we can only support her, and take the advice of the doctors.
"As a family we deal with it every day. The first thought when I wake up every day is, 'Is today going to be the day?'
"You try to be as positive as possible, and we are, in the main. She's incredible. Her spirit is indomitable, her will is absolutely fierce. She probably keeps us sane.
"When she was first in and told she would lose her hair she decided she wanted to donate her hair to Little Princes Trust, who use the hair to make kids who are going through chemo or have alopecia, things like that.
"One of the nurses was going to do it because she was previously a hairdresser, but she wasn't allowed due to covid, so I ended up having to cut off my daughter's hair, which was a crazy situation as well.
"But she managed to raise £10,000 for the charity. She's remained really positive. She's a great kid, she's managed to keep up with her school work as well.
"Her 'war cry' is that she just wants things to be normal. So that's what we try to achieve for her on a daily basis; a degree of normality in among all the madness."
Holidays have had to be put on stand-by due to Liv's condition, with part of the treatment meaning she's unable to fly.
However, she will be meeting her dad in Paris at the end of the charity cycle, making her way by train through the Channel Tunnel.
Allan said that of the £157million donated by the UK Government to Cancer Research, only two per cent went to dedicated research funding for children and young adults' research and funding, which he feels is "unfair to the point of being discriminatory".
He said: "That's 3.1million, so if you break that down by the 4,500 kids who are diagnosed with a form of cancer every year, the amount spent on each child is £700.
"I find that unacceptable, so it takes people like us in these types of situations to raise awareness and funds for children who are going to be in the same situation as Liv."
The end date for Liv's treatment in March 23 next year, but that is subject to how successful her treatment has been.
Allan said: "Fingers crossed and touch wood it all goes to plan. I'm sure it will.
"Liv has a big sister Ellie, she's 19 and she's been very supportive with helping Liv through the whole thing. And her mum, Abigail. We're a close-knit family. And we have the support of Liv's grandparents as well.
"The thoughts that go through your head as a parent, I've been somewhat unfortunate in my life, I lost my mum to cancer when I was 13, and my brother passed away aged 22 when I was 26.
"So, I've had to deal with things like that in the past, but nothing sets you up for dealing with it when it's your own kid.
"You deal with these thoughts in your head, you try to get on with your day job, and you try to make life as normal as possible, and be a normal family.
"And you are, in essence, but everything's there, the reminders are there. Her hair has started to come back in, which is a major thing for kids with cancer, but there are patches growing in that aren't quite right.
"She's 14 today so we need to support her as she grows from a child into a young woman, we need to be there for her emotionally, to know that she's ok."
Allan has cycled all his life, and had previously raised funds for Epilepsy Scotland, after his brother sadly died through the illness.
"I raised funds for Epilepsy Scotland by cycling from London to Paris, I also did a 10k run, things like that," said Allan.
"This is on a whole different level, this is 3,500km, so an average of 100 miles a day for 21 days. But it's doing it repetitively, day after day, which is going to be the biggest challenge.
"Trying to fit it around life, work, Liv's treatment, family and everything else - it really is a challenge.
"(All the entrants) are tasked with raising a portion of £1million, so it's £30,000 each, which we were fortunate enough to do very, very quickly.
"Training-wise it was difficult throughout the winter, but there are various online programmes you can get involved in.
"My training was curtailed with Liv being diagnosed with osteonecrosis in December. Personally, I took that quite hard, because it's debilitating. She hobbles along and at times she finds it really difficult to walk.
"She had a special boot on which she actually tripped over and dislocated her knee again. So we had all that to deal with as well as her treatment for the leukemia.
"I kind of 'lost my mojo' for two or three weeks, and then it was through the Christmas period, but since then I've been back at it, full-on, doing 100 miles at the weekends and trying to train as many weeknights as possible.
"I'll be relatively well prepared physically, but it'll be these thoughts in my head that will get me over these hills and to the finish.
"When things are hard I'll be thinking about Liv and kids in her situation."
Anyone who wants to donate to Allan's charity cycle should visit his JustGiving page.
